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00:01This is the largest temple in the world.
00:05It's called Angkor Wat.
00:09Immense in size and complexity of design,
00:13it has entranced visitors to Southeast Asia for nearly a thousand years.
00:19British archaeologist Pauline Carroll has been drawn here to see the temple for herself.
00:25I'm blown away by this epic scale of buildings.
00:28This is just going to be magical.
00:31And to follow the amazing new discoveries being found across Cambodia,
00:36as experts continue their work to piece together the history of the great Khmer people that built Angkor Wat.
00:44So I'm one of the first people to see this.
00:48800 years ago, Angkor was the beating heart of a powerful civilization.
00:53Angkor was a city of between 800,000 and a million people.
00:58The largest city on earth outside China.
01:01But within two centuries, it had all but vanished.
01:05Swallowed by the jungle, along with our knowledge of a great ancient society.
01:12Today, local archaeologists are building a new understanding of their ancient ancestors.
01:22Before King German VII was crowned in 1181, Angkor was in turmoil.
01:28While making huge leaps with the help of new technology.
01:32There's something emerge.
01:34We feel excited to discover new things in the modern day.
01:38What they are revealing exceeds their wildest hopes.
01:41Temples, infrastructure on a mind-boggling scale, and entire lost cities.
01:49Identifying the royal palace of an old city, you know, it doesn't happen every day.
01:56The story of the Khmer Empire is one of the most amazing in all of world history.
02:02But what are the secrets of its remarkable rise?
02:06And its catastrophic fall?
02:08So, here I am, Angkor Wat, ready for the sunrise.
02:19And this is such an exciting moment for me.
02:22I'm just, you know, this is something I've wanted to do for a long, long time.
02:26And I'm still kind of pinching myself. I can't believe that I'm actually sitting here.
02:29Pauline Carroll is a British archaeologist.
02:33These pieces are quite nice because they're the cone shape.
02:36So, it's the bottom of the amphora.
02:39So, these parts would have stood in, like, wooden holes when they were put onto the ships.
02:45Her work has taken her all over the world.
02:49From the Valley of the Nobles,
02:53to a king in a car park.
02:58Now she is adding Cambodia to her list of adventures.
03:06Her guide to Angkor Wat is Kin Po Tai.
03:12This is any archaeologist's dream to come, you know, and see these temples.
03:16This incredible ancient civilization.
03:18And I know that your background, you're an archaeologist as well.
03:21Well, I was trained as an archaeologist, yeah.
03:24And then work in the restorations a bit.
03:27And then being his tour guide for 25 years.
03:32Wow.
03:33So, yeah, I'm very familiar with the temples.
03:37As you know, this is my first time in Cambodia.
03:44So, tell me, what do I need to know about the Khmer Empire?
03:48We're here in Angkor Wat, the main or the largest temple of the Khmer Empire.
03:54The empire started from the 9th century.
03:59The temple was built in the 12th century.
04:03Tai grew up locally and has worked at Angkor for 25 years,
04:08studying the rise and fall of the Khmer Empire.
04:15We have another ruler, Jaya Varman VII, who ruled the empire almost 30 years.
04:24His empire spread so big that it's even further to Northern Thailand,
04:30down to the south, even further north to the south of China.
04:35He built roads, hospitals, school, temples, university, almost everywhere.
04:42So, what happened in the end then?
04:44It reached to the peak in the 12th century.
04:47And then after him, the empire started to go downhill.
04:53And then it reached to the abandoned in the 15th century.
04:58So, the Khmer Empire lasts almost 600 years.
05:03The most famous of Cambodia's temples is the one Pauline is standing in.
05:08Angkor Wat literally means city-temple.
05:17Built between 1122 and 1149, the complex sits over 400 acres.
05:23And the area within the moat is four times the size of Vatican City.
05:30Angkor Wat is one of the most imposing buildings on earth.
05:35The scale, the perfection, the beauty of the layout is quite astonishing.
05:45Everything about it is a palace.
05:48It was built by a king called Suryavama, who was a great warrior king.
05:54He was an empire builder.
05:56Angkor Wat is the largest Hindu temple ever built.
06:04It was a step up from anything before.
06:08And it turns out to be one of humanity's greatest step-ups for a state temple.
06:15Angkor Wat is built with five towers and it's a model of Meru.
06:22Meru is five mountains in the Himalayas where, in Hindu myth, the supreme gods live.
06:32When you approach this, you are approaching the palace of the gods.
06:37So, if you want the gods to come, you build something which looks like their home and you dedicate it to them.
06:45And it was the centre of a city which was perhaps a million people in the 12th century.
07:00The great city of Angkor spread for several kilometres in all directions around Angkor Wat.
07:07But there was far more to the Khmer Empire than a single temple or city.
07:14At its peak 800 years ago, the Khmer's vast borders stretched across Asia.
07:26It rivalled both China and India in power and influence.
07:32But its history remains more of a mystery to us than other ancient powerhouses.
07:38So, when we think about these other great civilisations, such as Egypt and Rome and Greece,
07:43it's easy for us as Westerners to identify with these people.
07:48This feels so much further apart from us and it feels like kind of a new learning curve, if you like,
07:55because you have to decode lots more information and connect with a different ancient civilisation that we're not that familiar with.
08:03By the 1450s, this once great civilisation had fallen and virtually disappeared.
08:15The reasons why are still being investigated.
08:19But the empire's decline meant that this whole site at Angkor was almost entirely abandoned and reclaimed by the jungle.
08:31For the next 300 years, knowledge of the sites faded to all except those who were local.
08:38But in the 1860s, Cambodia became a protectorate of France.
08:45When French archaeologists heard rumours of these enigmatic temples, they were entranced.
08:53While British archaeologists pursued Egyptology in North Africa, the French had begun a similar approach to the study of Khmerology in this far-flung corner of Southeast Asia.
09:08Over the next century, many other temple sites were discovered, revealing treasures and offering enticing clues to life in the Khmer Empire.
09:24But this came to an abrupt halt in the 1970s, when neighbouring Vietnam's war with America spilled over into Cambodian territory.
09:35It forced all archaeological work to be abandoned.
09:40Many of the treasures were looted, lost or destroyed.
09:46In an eight-year period, Cambodia was regularly carpet-bombed by the American forces, targeting the Viet Cong hiding in the jungles on the border with Vietnam.
09:58They released nearly three million tons of bombs over Cambodia.
10:03More than the Allies dropped during the entire Second World War.
10:09A consequence of this period of instability was the emergence of the Khmer Rouge, led by the murderous dictator Pol Pot.
10:18What followed was the Cambodian genocide and a senseless eradication of the country's history.
10:30It all came to a sudden stop, and the access to the temples disappeared, and the Khmer Rouge emptied all the towns and ended the lives of one third of the six million population.
10:45It was in the 1990s that Cambodia started to think again about its ancient history.
10:58Angkor Wat has built itself into the Cambodian psyche, and it's the symbol of this extraordinary past.
11:08Cambodia is enjoying a new era of archaeological research and discovery, and the country is once again open to curious visitors and international archaeologists.
11:14Cambodia is enjoying a new era of archaeological research and discovery, and the country is once again open to curious visitors and international archaeologists.
11:35After a traumatic recent past, Cambodian scholars are now looking to the future and reforging links to their ancient ancestors.
11:54British archaeologist Pauline Carroll is exploring the world-famous temples of Cambodia for the first time.
12:09I'm blown away, absolutely blown away by the scale of the Khmer Empire.
12:14This was an epic building, a monumental scale of building.
12:19Coming out here, it feels like such a long way from home.
12:26This has really kind of opened my eyes and understanding to a great civilisation.
12:32Today she is visiting another great temple in the Angkor Archaeological Park, just three kilometres from Angkor Wat.
12:40It was built in the 1200s, around 50 years after Angkor Wat, by the Khmer's greatest king, Jayavarman VII.
12:50It is called the Bayon.
12:58During this period, the Khmer Empire was at its most powerful, with wealth built on trade with Europe and China.
13:06The Bayon is most famous for its imposing faces, that sit on each side of every tower, keeping constant watch over the people below.
13:24But one of the temple's greatest treasures is its reliefs, epic histories of the Khmer, recorded in carved stone, that stretch across the immense galleries from floor to ceiling.
13:51So this is the bar relief of Bayon Temple.
13:58This is the market scene, people come to market, you see.
14:06Dr A. Darit is an expert in reading the stories depicted in these carvings.
14:12A rolling buyer tapestry in stone.
14:16And so what do the best reliefs reveal about the roles people played in society?
14:21So, lower level show about the daily life of people, especially this is the market activity.
14:28And see people selling fish and rich lady sit on a chair and wear something to know how many kilograms.
14:39She's wearing some nice jewellery, isn't she?
14:41Yeah, she wear a lot of jewellery.
14:43She's rich.
14:44Wealthy.
14:45This is the light in the city.
14:47And then you can see Chinese also come to the market.
14:50These Cambodians carry something to sell at the market.
14:55And these people are probably bargain to ask the price, how much?
15:04So near the market you can see the cockfighting between the Chinese and Cambodia.
15:13Probably they have money.
15:15So this is the money from the Cambodian side.
15:17This is money from the Chinese side.
15:20And this is everyday life, isn't it?
15:22Yeah, this is everyday life in a period.
15:24Like market, cockfighting, people travel along the road.
15:29And on the top is the activity of the people.
15:34In the Tudli Saab Lake, we can see a large boat.
15:38And a lot of people load on the boat and enjoy the party.
15:43So they are mostly Chinese.
15:45You can see Chinese.
15:47And then if we look more distant, more farther, you can see smaller boat.
15:52Smaller boat, they're fishing.
15:54So they threw the net into the water in order to catch the fish.
15:58And if we look more further, we can see very large boat on the top.
16:07Yeah.
16:08So this is how to look at the gallery from below to the top.
16:13Workaway.
16:14Oh.
16:15Yeah.
16:16Relief carvings on a temple's wall tell the story of the gods
16:21and tell the story of the kingdom.
16:24The newsreel technique that they developed was telling the people about what the king was doing,
16:33what the army was doing.
16:34A unique source of the history of the time, told to the people of the time,
16:40and still there for us to try and work out what exactly was going on.
16:45As well as offering enticing clues to daily life, the reliefs also chronicle the Khmer's
16:55running feuds with the neighbouring lands of Champa, in what is now Vietnam.
17:00Like one Khmer soldier fight with many Cham soldiers around him.
17:06So it shows that the Khmer soldier is strong to fight.
17:11And this is the Khmer soldier in the forest.
17:15And they face with the Cham soldier in the forest.
17:19Yeah.
17:20And then they fight.
17:23And those that built these grand temples are also part of the story.
17:29So this is another scene showing about how to cut the stone.
17:35Yeah.
17:36They use the iron and hammer.
17:38And this is how people carry the stone, after cutting and carry the stone.
17:44This is great because, again, it just, you know, it shows us everyday activities.
17:48Yeah.
17:49You know, this is key to the building.
17:51And, you know, this is where essentially it all starts, doesn't it?
17:54Yeah.
17:55Cutting the stone.
17:56From cutting stone.
17:57Yeah.
17:58To building a temple.
17:59To building there.
18:00Yeah.
18:01Building temples like these required millions and millions of stone blocks.
18:10But where did they come from?
18:13And how did they arrive here in such large numbers?
18:26The answer, only recently unearthed, is at Pauline's next stop.
18:33But to discover it, she must travel beyond the tourist rope lines and deep into the Angkor
18:40temple.
18:41This unassuming site sits 30 kilometers to the east.
18:54Pauline has come to meet Im Sokrati, one of Cambodia's leading archaeologists.
18:59His team has discovered the feat of engineering that made possible the building of Angkor's temples.
19:12Sokrati is running in the middle of the canal, 30 meters wide and 45 kilometers long.
19:19We do the archaeological field survey and we have strange results that while the canal is
19:28just running to the east and with no purpose on the water management at all.
19:35Im Sokrati's team realized that this canal, the equivalent of a six-lane highway, was used
19:45to bring stone quarried in the mountains right through to Angkor.
19:50The discovery of the modified river is the most recent that the Khmer archaeologists have come
19:57across.
19:59That was a breakthrough in understanding how they got so many millions of tons into Angkor.
20:06The volume of stone that had to be hauled from the mountains 40 kilometers away.
20:13The sandstone was hauled in huge blocks, cut out by hand, pulled by elephants on rafts over
20:21rivers into the great city of Angkor.
20:27The engineering skill and ingenuity required to build this immense production line is astounding.
20:36And so, with the scale of the size of this canal, how much stone are we kind of thinking
20:43about that's being transported?
20:45For example, Angkor Wat, Angkor Wat used more than ten million blocks of stone.
20:52Ten million?
20:53Yes.
20:54Wow.
20:55There are ten million blocks of stone transported by this canal.
20:57And that's just one?
20:58Honestly, one.
20:59And how many temples?
21:00More than 500 temples.
21:02Wow.
21:03Big and small.
21:04That's just, you know, to think of the scale of quarry and stone, I mean, that's monumental
21:09building, isn't it?
21:10Yes.
21:11And so this just acted like one large conveyor belt to transport that stone along?
21:15Yes, of course, that.
21:18Having identified the path of the waterway, attention has turned to interrogating the root
21:23of the canal in closer detail.
21:28Moving closer to the mountains, Im Socrates' team has made another important discovery.
21:37This is where we found concrete evidence to prove this is the transportation stone, as we
21:51see here.
21:52And, you know, this is not one block, but several blocks have been fallen.
21:58These blocks had been quarried from the Kulan Hills.
22:05They were on their way to form part of a great temple at Angkor, but fell into a canal along
22:12the way.
22:14Im Socrates' work here is ongoing.
22:19And it is helping to build a much better understanding of how temples like Angkor Wat and the Bayon were constructed.
22:33But if the foothills of these mountains provided the materials to build the temples,
22:39what other secrets do they hide higher up and deeper in the jungle?
22:44Cambodia is home to the Angkor Park.
22:59While Angkor became the center of the ancient Khmer civilization, it is not where the empire
23:05started.
23:11Pauline Carroll is continuing her journey outside the park's borders, venturing high into the
23:19mountainous jungle and deep into Cambodia's past.
23:26Alongside her is her guide, Kin Po Tai.
23:30So Tai, where are we going to now?
23:33We're actually heading north to where the sacred mountain called Pnum Kulen.
23:41And that's where the birthplace of the Angkor civilization.
23:48The journey to the Kulen Hills is two hours northeast of the Angkor Park, up into forests full of dense vegetation.
23:58So what's happening up there today in terms of archaeology?
24:02Kulen Hill was kind of left behind because it's all covered in jungle back then.
24:07And the access to this hill back in the 80s, the 90s, it was very difficult.
24:15These hills were a stronghold for the insurgent Khmer Rouge, from the civil war in the 1970s all the way through
24:24until the late 1990s.
24:27It made this whole area a foreboding and inaccessible no-go zone.
24:34Even now there remains the danger of unexploded landmines.
24:41But archaeological work here has resumed.
24:46So until recently, archaeologists trying to find some more evidence of temples.
24:53So there's a group of archaeologists working up there, trying to map, to understand what's the uses of all of these small archaeological sites.
25:08So there's actual active archaeology going on at the moment?
25:12They are actually excavating up there and we'll get to see that?
25:15Yes.
25:16And maybe I'll be able to go in and have a look myself.
25:19Yeah, exactly.
25:20We're going to try to find out this group of archaeologists up there that perhaps could tell us more evidence of what's going on.
25:34It is worth remembering that by the 12th century, Angkor was the beating heart of an enormous and powerful empire.
25:43Ruling over provinces and populations hundreds of miles away.
26:01Angkor itself was a progressive and advanced metropolis.
26:13At its peak, Angkor had a population of 800,000 to a million people and was therefore one of the two largest cities on earth.
26:25Far bigger than anything in Europe or anywhere outside China.
26:31The empire was wealthy from its global trade network.
26:35The Khmer Empire, they made contacts with Europe, with India, with China.
26:42Its scale is absolutely enormous.
26:45And there is a long way to go to understanding the full richness of an empire which went from Hanoi to Malaysia and from Myanmar to the Mekong Delta.
26:58But the origins of the Khmer Empire were far humbler.
27:07Hidden in the mountains 300 years before the construction of Angkor Wat, the empire's foundations were laid by a regional king, Jayavarman II.
27:18But like much of the ancient world here, his first creation was lost to time and swallowed up by the jungle.
27:27Pauline has come to meet Dr. Jean-Baptiste Chevence.
27:46He has spent more than 20 years here in these hills, working to prove that this is the site of Mahendra Prabhada,
27:56the capital city built by Jayavarman II, the first Khmer king.
28:03But trying to accurately uncover such an important site has not been a simple task.
28:13A cornerstone of Jibei's work, and the most obvious marker of a potential capital, is an imposing mountain temple called Rongchen.
28:25So, we just arrived at the Rongchen Temple, which is the temple localized in the center of the ancient city from the 9th century.
28:28So, we just arrived at the Rongchen Temple, which is the temple localized in the center of the ancient city from the 9th century.
28:32And it's a very special temple.
28:33And it's a very special temple.
28:34And the reason why?
28:39You have to guess what kind of shape this temple has.
28:46So, look here.
28:47Does it look a bit more clear?
28:48Does it look more familiar?
28:49Yeah?
28:50Yeah, this is looking familiar.
28:51Is it a pyramid?
28:52It is.
28:53It is.
28:54It is.
28:55It is actually the top of a pyramid.
28:57These are the last three levels of a five-level pyramid.
29:12This is just the tip of the iceberg.
29:16It is. It is actually the top of a pyramid.
29:19These are the last three levels of a five-level pyramid.
29:23This is just the tip of the iceberg.
29:25We are actually standing on the second level,
29:28which is a square of 100 meters,
29:32and there is a lower level, which is 220 meters wide.
29:35So it's a massive piece of work.
29:38It's a prototype.
29:39Basically, it's something that you will see later on
29:43in Angkor, in a very sophisticated way, like Angkor Wat.
29:47And it's a marker of a capital.
29:49If you have one mountain temple, you have basically a capital.
29:55All Khmer capitals follow the same basic plan.
30:00Organized in a grid, each capital contained
30:05a state temple, such as Angkor Wat,
30:08built on the highest point,
30:10a royal palace, built of wood,
30:15but upon stone foundations,
30:18and a giant man-made reservoir, called a barai.
30:24For years, Zhibé has been convinced
30:27that the two other city markers are close by,
30:30hidden in this jungle.
30:33His work on the ground has been painstaking,
30:36looking for a needle in a haystack.
30:40But in recent years,
30:41his team has been able to turn to technology
30:44in the form of LiDAR,
30:46surveying the site from the air
30:48with laser photography.
30:51This is an amazing aid to archaeology.
30:54Photons of light
30:55always reach the forest floor.
30:58The LiDAR technology
31:00removes all the photons
31:02that bounce back off the trees,
31:04and there you can see what was built.
31:07And it's thanks to that
31:09that we've got a picture now
31:10of a sophisticated city on Mount Kulen.
31:13And also, if you go from the Kulen map,
31:16you can find in miniature Angkor.
31:19It's the same pattern of Water Temple Palace.
31:26These LiDAR studies have enabled Zhibé
31:29to make huge advances in his quest to reveal
31:32the lost city of Mahendra Pravata.
31:36And it has armed him with something new.
31:39A map.
31:40Since we're here,
31:41on the top of the mountain temple,
31:43I'll show you a few maps
31:45to see where this temple is located
31:47within the city grid that was discovered
31:50thanks to the LiDAR.
31:52And the mountain temple in itself is located here.
31:55It was built on one of the highest points of the mountain.
31:58And if we zoom in,
32:00you can see that the city grid is organized
32:04with squares of 1.5 kilometers organized along axes.
32:10Essentially, this was the capital of the Khmer Empire
32:131,300 years ago.
32:14Yes, it was.
32:16But also, you have to balance this.
32:19Mahendra Pravata, the capital of Kulen,
32:21is not a creation from nowhere.
32:23It takes its roots from previous kingdom in Cambodia
32:27from the pre-Ankorean time.
32:30Here we have one king
32:32that came, establishes power
32:34and builds this important capital
32:36and moves quite quickly to the plain.
32:38So when the capital does move down to Angkor,
32:43is that the end of the story for this site?
32:45Yes and no.
32:45As a capital, yes,
32:47as a siege of the power for the king and the court.
32:50The capital Jayavarman II had founded
32:53in the sanctuary of the jungle
32:55had rapidly outgrown its purpose.
32:58He established the new capital there
33:02so that the Khmer's would never again
33:05become subject to an outside power.
33:10But you couldn't run this burgeoning empire
33:14from the top of the mountain.
33:16So very soon, he moved into the plain
33:18and the plain links to Angkor.
33:241,200 years after Mahendra Pravata
33:27was abandoned as the Khmer capital,
33:29Jibé continued his quest to rediscover its location.
33:34And the map revealed by the LiDAR
33:37instantly pointed him to the site of another city marker
33:40at a place called Tenar Marek.
33:44We are standing on a small bridge,
33:48which is on a dam.
33:51We are standing right here,
33:53which allows to cross the main valley
33:55of the south part of Gulen Plateau.
33:58The evidence shows that the reservoir
34:01was planned to be built and was started
34:03and not finished to the north of this dam.
34:07It's about one kilometer long
34:09and 300 meters wide.
34:10We knew about these two dikes
34:14that are in a L shape.
34:16They didn't really make any sense
34:18apart from this one.
34:20But now we clearly see a large area
34:23which has been partially dug.
34:25Once we had the LiDAR result,
34:27we could clearly see that there is a parallel dug line
34:31on the other side of the main dike.
34:35And it's also located where they could stock
34:38a maximum of water coming from the south
34:40of this valley to the north.
34:43The presence of water here today
34:45is deceptive and betrays the vast scale
34:48of the ancient site.
34:50This newly revealed reservoir
34:51was designed to hold over 3 billion gallons of water.
34:56So we didn't know anything about this
34:58up to the LiDAR results.
35:00But now that we have this technology
35:02that allows us to go below the canopy
35:05and to see and to have a very precise 3D model
35:08of the ground topography,
35:11we're able to redraw what we see
35:13and we clearly see here where we are.
35:17Those major dams that we previously know
35:20are now perfectly integrated into this grid system.
35:26So it all fits together now.
35:28We have the mountain temple,
35:29Prasad Rongshen, and the reservoir.
35:31I think it's a bit hard to see,
35:33but if you have the LiDAR,
35:34then it's very clear.
35:36Confident that he had identified
35:38two markers of the ancient Khmer capital,
35:41all Ji-Bay now needed
35:43was evidence of the lost royal palace.
35:51Beneath this dense jungle
35:53could lie the lost remains
35:55of the Khmer Empire's first capital city.
35:58The results of a recent LiDAR study
36:02have created a map
36:03that confirmed two key city markers,
36:06a state temple and a giant reservoir.
36:10It also led French archaeologist
36:13G.B. Chavance deep into the forest,
36:16back to a site he first explored in 2003,
36:20without registering its true significance.
36:23Of course, when you look around,
36:28it's very hard to see anything,
36:29but this all came from this pile of brick.
36:33It was, you know, as you can see,
36:34there's a few bricks here,
36:36and when you find bricks in this kind of context,
36:39you think temple, okay?
36:40So that's what I first thought.
36:43But then the guide I had,
36:45and also a lot of survey,
36:47and then a lot of excavation here,
36:49really show us that this site
36:51was not a little pile of brick.
36:56You have to imagine that
36:58before we had the mining team
37:00clearing the vegetations,
37:02it's the thick forest, right?
37:04It's a bit like, it's like there.
37:06It hasn't been touched there.
37:08Once it is a bit cleared from vegetation,
37:10you see that there is a platform.
37:15It's certainly an important site.
37:18It's not its position within the city.
37:20The material we found,
37:22architectural feature that we found here,
37:25no temple within this big rectangular shape,
37:28pointed to the fact that this enormous site
37:32is the Royal Palace.
37:34Finally, after 20 years of searching,
37:37the last piece of the jigsaw
37:39fell neatly into place.
37:41And so how did it feel
37:44when she got those LiDAR results back?
37:47Amazed, very surprised,
37:49a little bit frustrated
37:51not to have been able to spot
37:53some site before.
37:55In this site in particular,
37:56excitement because for sure
37:59identifying the Royal Palace of an old city,
38:03this is quite nice, you know,
38:04it doesn't happen every day.
38:07Frustration because it's massive.
38:11So even we had four campaigns
38:14and about 30 trenches.
38:16It's still looking at the site
38:18through the keyhole, I would say.
38:21Just standing here,
38:23my imagination is going wild
38:24to recreate how this would have looked.
38:26It's quite nice to imagine
38:28that King Jarman II was here
38:31around the year 800 AD
38:34and ruling the whole kingdom of Cambodia.
38:38The origins of the Khmer Empire
38:40are now better understood
38:42than ever before.
38:43And the recent rediscovery
38:45of Mahendra Pravata
38:47is a significant development.
38:55But although the king
38:57and his court moved away,
38:59life continued in these hills.
39:01As the Khmer Empire
39:08moved towards its peak
39:09in the 13th century,
39:11the Kulen Hills to the north
39:13became important
39:14as a site of industry
39:16and pilgrimage.
39:26Today, archaeologists
39:28are working to find evidence
39:29and uncover the secrets
39:31of those who were here
39:32more than 800 years ago.
39:37Pauline is with fellow archaeologist
39:39Chloe Shollet.
39:47She is leading the excavations
39:49at a site of interest
39:51in a hidden part of the mountains.
39:53Gosh, that was quite a climb down,
40:00wasn't it?
40:00Yeah.
40:02So we're coming to Pung Tarot.
40:05Pung means the cave.
40:07Yes.
40:08And Tarot is probably the name
40:10of someone who was living here.
40:12And this site is a hermit site,
40:15like many others in the Pung Kulain.
40:18Hermits were holy men
40:20who lived outside of society,
40:23offering wisdom to visiting pilgrims.
40:26They believe the elevated position
40:28of these hills
40:29placed them closer to the gods.
40:36And we are currently doing excavations here
40:39because we want to know better
40:42this kind of occupation with hermits
40:44which are not very known
40:46at the scale of the ancient Khmer territory.
40:49So what would usually be
40:50a normal working day for you guys?
40:52Every day, we begin at 7.30
40:55and we finish at 3 p.m.
40:58And that's the maximum we can do
41:00because of the heat.
41:01Because of the heat, yes.
41:02Yeah.
41:03Because it's already very hot, isn't it?
41:05It's only early.
41:06So this is the first trench
41:08we decided to open
41:10because while doing archaeological surveys
41:13prior to the excavations,
41:15we realized that there were
41:16two sandstone slabs
41:17just parallel on a vertical.
41:20They were meant to create
41:22a separate space in the rock shelter
41:24which was really intriguing
41:25and we wanted to know more
41:27about this specific area.
41:28So we decided to open
41:30between those two slabs
41:32and also beneath the rock shelter
41:33to see if we could find
41:35some specific archaeological material
41:37that could help us understand
41:39what was going on.
41:40So what have you found here?
41:42We did not find much material
41:44on the trench
41:45but this is also an information
41:47because it means that
41:48the use was probably not religious
41:51or something like that
41:52but it was more like a daily life.
41:55Maybe it was more to rest
41:56or something like that
41:57which makes sense.
41:59It's nice because, you know,
42:00we don't, as archaeologists,
42:01people always think that
42:02we need fines
42:03but we don't always need
42:04those fines, do we?
42:05This is telling its own story,
42:06isn't it?
42:07So you don't need those fines
42:08because this is what it is.
42:10And we do have clues
42:11about what was going on here.
42:13It was occupied
42:14because we do have the slabs
42:15but also these gutters
42:16just above this space
42:19which prevent the raindrops
42:23to fall into the cave.
42:25So it was meant to protect
42:27also this area
42:28and to make it comfy.
42:31And it's interesting
42:31just looking at this site
42:32because, you know,
42:34in England,
42:34you're so used to working
42:35on archaeological sites
42:36that are relatively flat
42:38and this has got
42:38an interesting slope.
42:39So you've got, again,
42:41another obstacle, haven't you?
42:42You've got it kind of
42:43going against you almost.
42:45The difficulty of this site
42:46is the rocks falling
42:48down the cliff
42:48and we had a lot of stones
42:51that we needed to remove
42:52from the trenches
42:54because they were
42:55blocking the view.
42:56Definitely a challenging site
42:58to work on, isn't it?
42:59It is, it is.
43:00The number of archaeological finds
43:02within the space
43:03used as sleeping cells
43:05has been low.
43:07But Chloe has had more luck
43:08as she's moved closer
43:10to the rock face.
43:14Here we found traces
43:16of occupations
43:17such as ceramics
43:18which were used
43:19for the daily life.
43:21We also found
43:22charcoal
43:23and we did find
43:25three fragments
43:26of inscriptions.
43:28We did find
43:28a lot of archaeological
43:29material here
43:30in the trench
43:31much more than
43:32in the other parts
43:33over there.
43:34Maybe the reason why
43:36is that we are getting
43:36closer to the Baroliev
43:38which was maybe
43:39the place of
43:40the main ritual activities
43:42on the site.
43:46The key treasure
43:47of this site
43:48is an inscription
43:49first recorded
43:50by archaeologists
43:51in the 1930s.
43:56So we are in the front
43:58of the most famous
44:00inscription of the site.
44:01This inscription
44:02is pretty interesting
44:03because it explains
44:05basically who was living there,
44:07what was the name
44:08of this area
44:09and what the hermit
44:11who was staying here
44:12made.
44:13So it presents
44:14a hermit
44:15whose name was
44:17Dharmavasa
44:18which means in Sanskrit
44:19the house
44:20of the Dharma.
44:22It begins
44:22with seven lines
44:24in Sanskrit.
44:25He was living here
44:26and this cave
44:26was called
44:27Shambu Guha
44:28which means
44:29the cave of Shiva.
44:30He made
44:31the Baroliev.
44:32This is basically
44:32what the inscription
44:33is telling us.
44:34It's pretty rare
44:35and it's very well
44:36preserved as well.
44:37And the last line
44:39in Khmer
44:39is telling us
44:40that a female slave
44:42was given
44:43to the god Shiva.
44:44So apparently
44:45people were coming
44:47and were helping
44:48in this place.
44:49So on one level
44:50he's saying
44:51he's on his own
44:52but he's not.
44:52He's got this female
44:53living with him.
44:53It's super special
44:55and it's so beautifully
44:56carved.
44:57Yeah indeed.
44:58So this is
44:58from the 11th century
45:00with the thing
45:01which is great
45:03because the Baroliev
45:04as well
45:05the style
45:06of carvings
45:07could be
45:08of the 11th century.
45:09Again
45:09it brings the story
45:11to life
45:11doesn't it?
45:11Exactly.
45:12We see
45:12evidence
45:14actual written evidence
45:15of the person
45:16that lived there.
45:18It was so great
45:19to be able
45:19to excavate here
45:20to compare
45:21the information
45:21because it's
45:22directly mentioning
45:23things that
45:24were on the site.
45:25And you know
45:26this I think
45:27the thing
45:27that's just amazing
45:28is that this
45:28is a thousand
45:29years old
45:30isn't it?
45:31And it looks
45:31as though
45:31it could have
45:32just been done
45:32yesterday.
45:34It's so well
45:34preserved.
45:35And this is
45:36pretty amazing
45:36to be able
45:37to really
45:38so clearly
45:38just with the
45:40eyes today.
45:42Oh it's
45:42absolutely
45:42beautiful.
45:49Still to come
45:50Pauline's journey
45:52continues
45:53as she travels
45:53as she travels
45:53north to follow
45:54the expansion
45:55of the empire
45:56where brand new
45:57archaeological work
45:59is unearthing
46:00previously hidden
46:01evidence.
46:03Even
46:04Kaibori
46:04local people
46:05almost forgot
46:06that here
46:07there's something
46:07that's very
46:08important.
46:09She discovers
46:10the legacy
46:11of Angkor's
46:11most significant
46:12ruler
46:13and explores
46:14how he drove
46:15the Khmer empire
46:16to its highest peak.
46:17this amount
46:19this crowd
46:19need to be
46:21properly managed
46:22politically
46:22economically
46:23socially
46:24and medically.
46:25You know
46:25he's a great king
46:26he's like
46:27Ramaziz the Great.
46:28Pauline's journey
46:34continues next
46:35Saturday night
46:35at ten past
46:36eight.
46:37No need to
46:37wait though
46:38all episodes
46:38of Lost Temples
46:39of Cambodia
46:40are streaming
46:40right now.
46:42On a collision
46:42course of
46:43astronomic proportions
46:44next tonight
46:45Halle Berry stars
46:46in the network
46:47premiere of
46:47disaster epic
46:48moonfall